Leon Uris (14 page)

Aboard the C–5 each member of the Recreation and Morale team was issued a packet of maps, personalized for each Marine’s participation in the raid.

The mission and the importance of Bandar Barakat was explained. Jeremiah called for map blowups and went over the plan, minute by minute, inch by inch. Many the day and week they had drilled in specific maneuvering that was now fitted inside the scheme of the raid.

Every Marine had secondary and tertiary duties. All of them could double as corpsmen. Nicknames and personal names only spoken now, no calling a person by his rank. This they had also trained for, and it was hallelujah time when they got to call Major General Jeremiah Duncan “Dogbreath.”

Gunner Quinn O’Connell was the Mayday pilot, bombardier, second backup on the electronic systems, corpsman, and backup navigator behind the pilots.

Grubb, the field commander, and squad leaders Ropo and Marsh, Novinski on electronics, and the pilots, Cherokee and IV, were networked through their helmets to Dogbreath and Quinn.

More intelligence photos. More weather information.

Now a weapons and ammunition check. The
twenty Marines were going in with serious firepower.

Duncan snarled time and again, he had pressed the President so hard to make an instant strike, he might have bought a pig in a poke. Would it not have been better to have practiced a virtual raid for a week? They’d find out.

A mere sixteen and a half hours had elapsed since the terrorist attack. The C–5 flew quite close to where the Lear jet’s scattered bits and pieces floated on the waves below.

The plane veered off course, following international waters so as not to fly in an air space where permission would be required.

They did aerobic exercises in the C–5, hard, hard, hard, hard. Major Hugo Grubb was a monster for conditioning. He could make a man’s hand fall off with finger exercises.

Chow included beer! Three per Marine. It would slow down the heart thump, drown out the jumping nerve ends.

One more time they went through a step-by-step account of the coming strike.

Two films were set up, one straight and one porno. By dawn light everyone was in their canvas bunk, dead out, snoring so loud their sound nearly drowned out the jet engines.

NATO AIR BASE
TIKKAH, TURKEY

RAM-A arrived ahead of schedule and was whisked to an isolated hangar, where they were sealed in.

The men stretched, yawned, belched, scratched, and passed air, cracking their bones into alignment. Quickly awake, they unloaded their gear from the
C–5 and laid their packs and weapons against a wall.

A hushed moment among the gathering as the SCARAB was rolled down the C–5 ramp. Lord, it looked so small and fragile, an infant being born from the gigantic cargo ship.

The wings had been turned on a pivot for travel, running from tail to cockpit. They were rotated into normal flying mode and clicked in.

Cherokee entered the plane and hit the thumb switch to raise the nacelles housing the engines and propellers. He set them at 75 degrees so the blades would be well clear of the deck. The long and powerful blades had an upside and a downside. Downside, all takeoffs and landings had to be made in helicopter mode. Downside, when firing missiles from underwing racks, they also had to be in helicopter mode. Upside, the plane was hushlike quiet in flight and unlikely to be heard by the enemy.

Showers!

Slabs of beef for breakfast with pasta and gallons of orange juice and high-voltage chocolates.

Captain Novinski and his backup man, Master Tech Sergeant Roosevelt Jarvis, entered. They set up a minidisplay and command console, directly behind the pilots, activated and checked out systems and the display panels.

“SMAC?”

“Pretty as a picture.”

“SMAC locked in.”

“Matching area correlation?”

“A-Okay.”

“NOE?” Jarvis checked the digital tracking map system.

Novinski and Jarvis were joined by the chief American navigator at the Tikkah Air Base. The three of them programmed in a flight plan. They activated
the terrain-following multifunction radar that would take pulsations from the ground and compare them to their database and display their position to within a hundred feet.

The chief navigator pointed out choppy air corridors, hidden peaks, radar stations, and myriad dangers.

In the radio shack, the pilots received their radio frequencies as well as Russian and Iranian frequencies.

“Fellah?”

“Yo,” Corporal Anwar Fellah answered, taking a headphone set that would include him in the command network.

“When you get the red light, it will indicate that we are being contacted by a tower or, God forbid, a fighter plane patrol. If they are speaking in Farsi,” Quinn said, “I’ll signal you to talk to them. Positive of the drill?”

“Gotcha.”

“Volkovitch, the same goes for you in Russian.”

“Aye, aye.”

Bomb carts rolled in sleek baby missiles. The “Duncan” missiles were short, light, but could penetrate a heavily resistant bunker. At Fort Urbakkan they would be shooting at a mix of mud and stone.

A second set of bombs were little fat ones, murderous against personnel, ugly cluster bombs to shower the enemy with thousands of razor-sharp steel squares and ball bearings.

The nacelles would remain at 75 degrees so the SCARAB could fire from helicopter mode without fear of hitting the propellers. Space under the wing was limited. The laser guidance system looked fine.

The bombing run, in Gunner O’Connell’s hands, had to be executed accurately and surely. To hit the targets dead-on, the SCARAB would be maneuvered as close as possible. Would the hovering SCARAB
take Iranian ground fire in this period? Were the bombs squirrely? Could they be held fast during what had to be a wild, shaking flight?

In the rear of the main cabin of the SCARAB an operating table and supplies of blood, surgical tools, and medicines were secured on the ceiling. A pulley rope allowed them to drop easily into place. Dr. Wheat checked over his supplies. Christ, keep the casualties down. The table was again stowed and secured to the roof.

Jeremiah Duncan and his pilots went over the exterior of the SCARAB, an inspection that lasted an hour and a half. In that time a tanker truck entered the hangar and filled the plane with fuel. This was a dicey moment. With this size load and full gas tanks, there was a remote possibility of fire during takeoff. Jeremiah had spotted the danger months earlier, and hoped he had beaten the problem with the Bell and Boeing engineers.

“Gentlemen, the SCARAB is ripe!”

The Marines went to their combat packs and weapons, waiting for the command to fall in.

“You will first evacuate your bowels and bladders. No one will be permitted to leave until he takes an airsick pill.”

Groan! Boo!

“You
will
take the airsick pill because the Marine Corps says you need an airsick pill. We’ll be riding some nausea-causing waves of air, and we will bounce until your gut humps up into your throats. Puking is not an option, but if you must do so, vomit in your evacuation bags.”

When all had evacuated who could, they fell in near the boarding ramp. Personnel were loaded forward to aft, so Jeremiah did a round of handshakes and entered behind Cherokee and IV.

Directly behind the pilots and a step higher than
their heads, Duncan had a mini-console installed. Duncan, with Novinski on one side of him and Quinn on the other, could read a number of displays from it, to monitor the speed, fuel, terrain, communications, as well as the systems that would come into play at the time of their attack.

“Intercom, we all hooked up?”

“Yo, Quinn.”

“Yo, Cherokee.”

“Yo, IV.”

“Yo, Grubb.”

“Ropo, on.”

“Marsh, yo.”

“Novinski here.”

“All troops present and accounted for, sir.”

The hangar door yawned open. A tow cart inched SCARAB out into the dying light. With the nacelles at 75 degrees, the SCARAB could be rolled a short distance on the runway in a fuel-saving maneuver for takeoff as compared to full helicopter thrust.

“Dogbreath, this is Cherokee. Shall we go for a rolling start?”

“This is Dogbreath, let me think. We’ve got a monster load on. Any half-power stunts promulgates six or seven risks I can think of, none of them pleasant. Ninety degrees and full thrust, get this son of a bitch up in the air.”

“Yo.”

Cherokee switched on the engines, a whine and then the SCARAB’s whispering thunder.

“Thrust,” Cherokee ordered.

IV took the long handle to his left and levered it down. The SCARAB hesitated an instant, rose, hung, then popped up.

“We’re at a thousand…eleven hundred,” IV said.

“Beep the nacelles down.”

Cherokee’s Fred Astaire feet tickled the rudders as
his hand on the joystick held the nose still.

“Nacelles at forty-five degrees.”

“Let’s do some flying…but first I want to sing you all a little song.”

Arrayed at the cramped console behind the pilots, Novinski engaged the FLIR to be able to see the ground at night.

Jeremiah and Quinn hovered over the displays depicting Fort Urbakkan’s layout. The fort’s main installations stood three hundred feet down a courtyard next to a headquarters building with radio and telephone capacity. Next to headquarters, an enlisted barracks and mess hall, next the officers quarters. Across the back wall, the supply building and arsenal.

Opposite this, a stable for mules to negotiate the final miles along the cliff-side road to Urbakkan. Then a small prison and punishment court.

Quinn took a radio message and decoded it.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF COMMANDING OFFICER BEING BILLET-ED IN MOSQUE
.

“That makes the cheese more binding,” Dogbreath said. “Quinn?”

“Yo, I read it.”

“Do you think we should save a rack of missiles in case the mosque is armed?” Duncan asked of Quinn.

“No. This intelligence gives us the advantage of entering right over the main gate with no potential enemy able to get behind us. This baby flies so quietly, we’ll make our entrance without being detected. I say we come in and over the main gate, hover and unload our missiles and bombs right down the bowling alley. As soon as the buildings and their munitions go, we come down right alongside Barakat’s tower.”

“Let me think about it,” Dogbreath said. And he did, until his eyes washed out from glaze and concentration.

“Cherokee, this is Dogbreath.”

“Yo.”

“We’re probably going to scratch the mosque as a target. That means we can fly directly over the main gate.”

“No problem.”

“Novinski, this is Dogbreath.”

“Yo,” answered Novinski, sitting next to the general.

“Any of those gadgets give me a reading of how noisy it is outside?”

“Yo,” Novinski said. “Whispering Jesus, singing a lullaby. Under eighty decibels.”

Dogbreath shook his head in amazement. The SCARAB was eight times more quiet in the turboprop mode than as a helicopter. Should we make a bombing run or hope that the Iranians are totally off guard? We need a few minutes to get into the fort and for Quinn to squeeze off his missiles. I vote for Quinn.

Dogbreath turned and smiled and waved to RAM in the rear. They sat knee to knee in hard-ass bucket seats, their combat packs, helmets, and weapons crammed on the deck in the center aisle. Dogbreath found something else to fret about: the main cabin was not pressurized, and they’d have to go on oxygen if the SCARAB went high to save fuel.

The first point of the flight was to fly into the northernmost tip of Iran, avoiding Tabriz radar. The SCARAB took to her zigzag preprogrammed course like an old pro. Although the entire mission was made more difficult by mountains, she cruised unexcitingly.

No calls from Tabriz!

Sensing that radar coverage was poor and feeling the SCARAB might not be picked up at all because of
her composite materials, Dogbreath ordered her up over the mountaintops to save fuel.

They flew close to plan toward the Iranian-Armenian-Azerbaijan borders.

“Volkovitch and Fellah, this is Dogbreath.”

“Yo.”

“Yo.”

“Are you scanning your frequencies?”

“Fellah here. Tabriz tower is speaking normally. Apparently, they didn’t see us or hear us.”

“Volkovitch?”

“No news from the Russians in Baku.”

“Novinski?”

“Yo?”

“Anybody’s radar suspect we’re up here?”

“Sure doesn’t look like it.”

“Dogbreath to Cherokee and IV. We’re looking very clean. Let’s make a run for the Caspian Sea just south of Arbail,” Dogbreath ordered.

The SCARAB descended as she approached the Caspian Sea and banked right to follow the coast. A high mountain range along the coast would give them cover from inland installations. Intelligence had the mountains well photographed. A dodge here and a twist there would keep them from being spotted.

Those not eating candy bars slept sitting up.

At the Iranian-Turkoman border, Dogbreath ordered the pilots to stay north and cross a deep marsh that would allow them to come around the back door into Iran and give a wide berth around Teheran.

Into a mad swirl of clashing hot and cold winds, the SCARAB chopped and chopped and dropped suddenly, then dropped into a wadi with her tail almost completely whipped around. Cherokee quickly took her off automatic pilot.

The craft was sorely protesting her load and altitude.

“Novinski, this is Cherokee, how is your terrain following?”

“We’re in a tight-ass valley. The cross winds are too crazy. We may not be getting accurate readings,” Novinski said.

“I’m going visual. You stay on the multifunction radar,” Cherokee said.

“Yo,” IV said.

Cherokee put on his nightvision goggles, whispered an “Oh, Jesus.” “I’m going up a thousand feet and clear that ridge.”

That ridge didn’t want to be cleared, hurtling wind into chainsaw mountaintops. Debris spewed up, some of it pelting the SCARAB.

“Shit!” Novinski noted as the bottom fell out on the far side of the ridge. Another roller-coaster wadi compelled Cherokee and IV to fly by the seat of their pants.